The guide addresses a critical gap in traditional school models: the tendency to misidentify language acquisition as a learning disability and over-refer MLs for special education services. It advocates for a culturally and linguistically-aligned lens to ensure that multilingual learners receive support that respects their primary language and cultural background.

This great round up of resources compiled by Katie Novak, a UDL leader in Massachusetts and beyond, covers a huge amount of territory: UDL basics and video explainers, common misconceptions, a UDL implementation rubric, a UDL assessment flowchart, what to look for to evaluate UDL implementation in classrooms, recommended books and much more.

Access session materials from the February 2020 MTSS Planning Institute opportunity, developed as a follow-up to the September 2019 MTSS Leadership Institute based on educator requests for additional learning opportunities and facilitated planning time.

Note: The Massachusetts MTSS Blueprint was updated in 2025. Many tools from the 2020 institute are aligned to older 2018 version of the Blueprint.

Session materials from DESE’s 2019 MTSS Leadership Institute. Note: Some materials are based on the 2018 Massachusetts MTSS Blueprint which was updated in 2025.

In recent years, DESE has published and utilized several frameworks and resources that capture elements of great schools and levers to create conditions that improve student outcomes. The Coherence Guidebook pulls them together into one place to illustrate a systems-level path toward deeper learning.

Tool kit created by UnboundEd that educators can use to facilitate a “brave conversation” about bias. Includes an overview of the 3-part conversation process, slide presentations with notes and resources, and activities you can use and adapt to support part of the conversation.

Access session materials from the 2018 LEA event on topics including creating a pipeline of diverse educators, developing multi-tiered systems of support, equitable access to high quality curriculum, bilingual education, ensuring racial and cultural equity, effectively engaging families, student mobility, approaches to addressing students’ mental health needs, integrating social emotional and academic learning, and more.

DESE’s October 2019 Leading with Access & Equity Conference had a great line-up of sessions! Access all conference materials here.

The updated 2025 Massachusetts MTSS Blueprint unpacks MTSS from three perspectives: why it is important, what it entails, and how to approach implementation. It reflects a holistic view of student development and MTSS implementation lessons from the field and research.

This EDWIN report helps school and district leaders understand equity gaps in students’ learning experiences with effective educators; for example, the report shows how often students had assignments with different types of teachers over the past one to five years. This series of three videos and related guidance explain how the report works and how to interpret and use the data.